this short compendium of Christian | Christians, the resurrection, as com

consolation, which he desired might be carefully borne in mind, he would not fail to interweave into such compendium a distinct reference to the complex nature of the Redeemer's person; and, not content himself with referring him to Jesus Christ, he would add some such description as this-" of the seed of David," in order to mark his real humanity. I am not arguing that we have reason to expect that wherever St. Paul makes mention of the Saviour, he would accumulate terms expressive of the fact, that, in the person of this Saviour, God and man were wonderfully classed; but I do argue, that when he commends to the special memory of such a convert as Timothy a succinct statement of gospel truth, we might reasonably anticipate an allusion to the fleshly clothing in which Deity veils itself, and look for words which would decidedly imply, if not directly assert, the mysterious things of the Redeemer's incarnation.

pared with the crucifixion, might almost be termed a forgotten thing; so that if our acts were constructed according to the tenor of popular theology, we might mark numerous Good Fridays in the year, and only one Easter Sunday; ground being thus afforded for the necessity, which there was not to Timothy, of being literally reminded that Jesus Christ had been raised from the dead. But the resurrection has set the seal of Deity on the crucifixion. It proclaims with a voice as audible and piercing as though the words had been uttered by angelic messengers passing through the length and breadth of the earth, that every debt had been boldly met and discharged, and that every claim that justice could put forth on the human race had been destroyed; and the shivered fragments of the Redeemer's tomb were just so many tokens of the high barriers which sin had thrown up, and which were hurled and dashed away by the Godman's anger. In whatever degree you learn to behold from the resurrection the actual completion of all that had been proposed by the incarnation, that Christ was delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justification; in that same degree you will be led to link, in all the associations of memory, Christ's resurrection and Christ's humanity; inasmuch as feeling that no surety could have died, save one, who was bone of your bone, and flesh of your flesh; you must also feel that no surety could have risen for you unless he had been of the seed of David. Hence, while reminding Timothy that Christ Jesus was raised from the dead

I stay not to establish generally the proposition, which can scarcely be thought to stand in need of demonstration; but I turn to the particular truth of Christ's resurrection, and ask you, whether it be not essential to the right and profitable remembrance of this truth, that we should always couple it with the leading doctrine of our creed, even that of the union of the divine and human nature in the person of one mediator between God and man. It is foreign to my purpose to inquire, whether there be any Christian faith which does not, in one way or another, involve a reference to this prominent article. The crucifixion is nothing but a most perplexed and inex-might seem vague and unnecessary, plicable mystery the instant we lose sight of Christ; first, as man, and therefore able to suffer; and, secondly, as God, and therefore able to atone. It holds good in the same degree of the resurrection, the one event giving But I have hitherto argued, mainly, to the other the sanction of divine ac- on the supposition that the human naceptance, and Christ, bursting the ture of the Saviour is alone referred to bondage of the grave, proving most in this expression. There is, however, rigidly to men and angels, that Christ, a distant allusion to other truths, as expiring on the cross, had availed to well as to the Redeemer's humanity in the full redemption of the countless this accurate specification. It is a myriads for whom he died. Yet, con- wonderful thing to cast one's eye over nected as are the events, it is unde- the prophetic pages, and behold how niable, that with the majority of years past, and years that are to come,

the fact which he bade him remember, that Christ Jesus was of the seed of David, is a lesson every way worthy both of the Apostle who gave it, and of the disciple who receives it.

do alike burn with the deeds and tri- | I appeal simply to the fact, and deumphs of David's Son, under the name mand of every student of Holy Writ, and title of a descendant from the man whether there be any title under which after God's own heart. A believing prophecy tenders so vast a revenue of remnant did in the earliest ages eagerly honour as it does to the seed, or heir, watch for a mighty deliverer, who or antitype of David. If I desired to should introduce on earth a new dis- call up in the mind of the patient dispensation, and throw open to the chil- ciple the largest and most splendid dren of our fallen race a storehouse of train of Scriptural expectations, what spiritual benedictions: and the Son of word, or single epithet is there, which David came attended, not indeed by could be used with half so much magic any of the retinue of a monarch's pomp, energy as the name of that monarch and bearing not the outward tokens of who swayed the sceptre over God's affinity to him who had swayed the people, and swept his harp to God's sceptre over the free and prosperous praise, eminently prefiguring that mightribes of Israel. Nevertheless, invest- ty being who shall finally rule over a ed with the splendid credentials, and rejoicing universe, and give golden being not only the offspring but the chords into the hands of millions, who root of David, and gathering to him- shall laud his name with an unearthly selfall that the sacrifices of the Priests, minstrelsy. And if you remember that and the visions of the Prophets, had the resurrection of Jesus Christ was, accumulated of wonderful or beautiful in every sense, preparatory to the setpromise-yea, verily, the heir of Da- ting up of the unbounded dominion of vid arose, and did marvellous things the seed of David-that which verified, in the land of David. Much that hath in fact, the Redeemer's claim to that been declared of this mysterious per- crown which Daniel had beheld given sonage awaits still its accomplishment: to one like unto the Son of Man-and and future days of glorious doings, on thus pointed out the despised and rewhose very threshold, it may be, the jected and crucified Nazarine as the existing generation may almost tread, potentate who should achieve the ilare big with strong and brilliant acts lustrious things seen in the vision of to be wrought beneath the government patriarchs and holy men-then is not of him whom Jesse's son but faintly the joint mention of “the resurrectypified. I ask you to cast but a cur- tion" and "of the seed of David," sory glance over those portions of neither more nor less than an emphaScripture whose productions are un- tical appropriation of the treasures of fulfilled; and will you not find that a prophecy to him whom we honour as throne is yet to be erected, on which our Lord and Master?—and does not shall sit one known and designated by the injunction to "remember that Jesus this name of David? What is there of Christ, of the seed of David, has been raised the lovely or the sublime in all the from the dead" amount to a solemn, sketches of that scene for which the and yet simple admonition, bidding us church most intensely longs, that is not let go the stupendous hope of the not, in some way or other, bound up Christian Church; but to bear diliwith the reign and presence of the gently in mind that we are the subseed of David? So that there were jects of a Being who died in ignominy, little or nothing exaggerated in the but who shall reign in majesty, and assertion, that the Bible developes no who shall exalt to the possession of features of greatness in the approach- extended empire all who bow down ing allotment of the Christian Church, before his cross? which are not attached, in precise and definite phraseology to Christ, as born of David's seed, rather than to Christ as known under any other description. It concerns not my argument to examine into the reasons which might induce the frequent introduction of the name of David whenever the triumphs of Messiah are the subject of discourse.

Truly, the more the mind ponders over the combination of ideas which are gathered into this apparently brief and superfluous message of Paul to Timothy, the more will it be struck with the beauty and consolation it conveys. Can a believer be told that Christ Jesus has been raised from the dead, without finding the whole array

Now, I have dwelt at sufficient length on the first head of discourse; and much that I have advanced in illustration of the importance of the clause, "of the seed of David," applies equally to the other," according to my gospel;" which I would, in the second place, exhibit to you, as giving strength and emphasis to St. Paul's commemoration of the death and resurrection of our Saviour.

You remember the strong terms in which St. Paul, when writing to the Corinthians, states the importance of the resurrection as an article of the Christian faith. He may be said to resolve the whole of our religion, all its truth-all its value-all its beauty

of the mediatorial work, all its wrestlings-all its glories-all its victories, pass rapidly before him; inasmuch as the memory of the risen Saviour does presuppose the immediate knowledge of a dying Saviour? And how can a believer be reminded of that being who thus won to himself the honours of God, by spurning the trammels which bound all those whom sin has made heirs of corruption-how, I say, can he be reminded that this Being is the very mighty one of whom glorious things are spoken as of the seed of David, without feeling his spirits hurried into the august palaces which are yet to be built for the saints of the Most High, and beholding the waste places of the earth enamelled with into the one fact that Christ Jesus freshness, with fountains bursting forth had been raised from the dead. "If amid the sands of the desert, and piety Christ be not raised"-thus it is he and purity encircled in one girdle, and speaks-"your faith is in vain, you the powers of unrighteousness chained are yet in your sins: then they also and subjugated, and the teeming tribes which are fallen asleep in Christ are that shall possess this earth; and all perished." And it is in accordance these marvellous revolutions produced with such passages as these, parallels under the government of him who des- of which are of most frequent occurcribes himself under such terms as rence, that I shall consider myself these "I am the root and the off-warranted in pronouncing the gospel spring of David-the bright and morn- of Christ Jesus the gospel of the reing star." Then I ask, whether there surrection. be not, in consideration and reflection of this expansive character, a sufficiency of proof that the connexion of the fact of Christ having been born of the seed of David, and Christ having been raised from the dead, gives to the resurrection of the Redeemer much of its most sublime and solemn character --that it invests it with those properties which render it, to creatures constituted as ourselves, the most prized and precious article of belief-and that, consequently, suggesting as it manifestly does, the gigantic thought of a world redeemed by the risen Mediator from the tyranny of Satan, and that same world reanimated beneath the Redeemer's dominion with a loveliness tenfold more lovely than that which sparkled amid the young and yet unblighted Eden-I ask you, whether there be not, in all these combinations of instructive thought, enough to vindicate from the charge of unmeaning truism, and to stamp with im-rance. We forget that always, previous portance this declaration of Paul to Timothy, "Remember that Jesus Christ, of the seed of David, was raised from the dead according to my gospel?"

We are so accustomed, from our earliest infancy, to believe implicitly the doctrine of the soul's immortalityit is taught us, I might almost say, in our cradles and so wound up with all the institutions of religion, and all the associations of life, that we pass into a comparative forgetfulness of its awful stature; and receiving it as a thing of course, overlook it as a truth of the most stupendous dimensions. We forget, amid the multiplicity of truth which even natural religion will now profess to put forth of a future state, that the proudest and most acute philosophy which ever arose amidst the wisest of Heathen nations wrestled with strugglings which were mighty, but which were wholly ineffectual to throw themselves into the deep regions which lay beyond the grave, and to snatch some fragments of knowledge which might be held up to the admiration and gaze of a world lying in igno

to the appearance of Christ on earth, and independent of the assistance of divine communication, there certainly have been men gifted above their fel

faith is virtually based upon it-that independent of this, whatsoever there be of promise loses all its attractive

lows, who pondered deeply on futurity, | have dreamt in the wildest dream of and grappled with the mysterious sha- enthusiasm of uttering such words as dows of some coming destinies; yet a these "I am the resurrection and luminous doubt was, after all, the very the life." summit of their attainments, and a By stating the fact, that life and imsplendid conjecture the highest result mortality have been brought to light of their most laborious searchings after by the gospel, to which I suppose St. truth. Even if human science had Paul to allude when he speaks of revealed, with the general develope- Christ Jesus as "raised from the dead ment of the fact, that man, frail as he according to my gospel"-I suppose seems and feeble, doth yet carry in him designing to remind his son Timohimself a spark of celestial fire, which thy, not so much of the simple truth of can no more be quenched than can the Saviour's resurrection, as of the that Deity which is the light of the colouring and character which this universe; still, that bone should come event gave to the whole system of again to bone-that the dust which is Christianity and however meagre scattered to the winds of heaven shall might sound the bare mention of be compounded once more, into shape Christ's emancipation from the power and symmetry, and that the rude heaps of the tomb, yet when we have reason of the charnel house shall resolve to remember that this truth interthemselves into living forms-that cor- weaves itself with every part of our ruption shall put on incorruption, and | religion—that the whole fabric of our mortal put on immortality-Oh, there never would be philosophy which could master this: it was above it-it was beyond it and while familiarity withness, whatsoever there be of precept the truth takes off something of the loses all its impressiveness-there is strangeness of the marvel; yet I pray no longer any thing unnecessary in the you to remember, when you see a apostolic message, though one scarcely grave prepared, and the coffin lowered, inferior to the Apostle be the party adand the tears of the mourners almost dressed. Hence the surprise we might dried up by the brilliant thought that have felt at St. Paul's writing to Tithe body of the brother or sister which mothy, "Remember that Christ Jesus they thus commit to so cold a custody was raised from the dead," vanishes shall not only moulder or waste away, utterly, and is lost, when we find him but shall stir at length in its narrow adopting such terms as these " Rehome, and throw off, as with a giant's member that Jesus Christ, of the seed strength, the ponderous burthen of the of David, was raised from the dead acsepulchre, and come forth with that cording to my gospel." The latter body glorified and purified which is clause may, in fact, be said to identify now encompassed with all the disho- the gospel with the resurrection : nours of death-when, I say, you be- and certainly I am prepared to argue hold a spectacle like this, a spectacle that the more you regard the gospel of which would be deemed a most unac- Christ as the gospel of the Resurreccountable prodigy if it were not of tion, the more you will understand the common occurrence- Oh, it is the gospel, and the more you will be consoul's loftiest triumph-a triumph over soled by the gospel. Is not the resurthe wreck of all that is material and rection mixed up with the earliest elesensible a triumph over bone, and ments of the gospel? Is it not said flesh, and sinew, dislocated and de- that “we are buried with Christ—that composed and shattered ;-then I pray like as Christ was raised up from the you to give the honour alone where dead by the glory of the Father, even the honour is due, to ascribe the vic- so we also should walk in newness of tory to the true and actual conqueror, life?" Is not that power whereby and to remember that the gospel of sinners are converted, and through Christ is the gospel of the resurrec- which they are held up and establishtion; and that until the Redeemer ap-ed, literally defined as the resurrection propriated the character to himself, power? For does not St. Paul pray there was never a being who could on behalf of his Ephesian converts,

day." Who, after the introduction of such particulars as these, can fail to join in the desire which St. Paul has expressed on his own behalf, “that I may know Christ, and the power of his resurrection :" and who, when he finds the character of that knowledge after which the Apostle most ardently strove, can marvel that he should

in memory of the truth, that according to the gospel which had been preached to him, Christ Jesus, of the seed of David, had been raised?

"that they may know the exceeding resurrection. "Whoso eateth my flesh greatness of God's power to us-ward and drinketh my blood, hath eternal who believe, according to the working life; and I will raise him up at the last of his mighty power, which he wrought in Christ when he raised him from the dead?" And is not, moreover, the Christian's hope-nay, even the Christian's title to future blessedness, so completely the result of the resurrection, that the resurrection may be represented as the acting and generating principle? For what else can Peter denote when he speaks of God as hav-charge his own son in the faith, to live ing "begotton us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away?" I ask you, whether it be not undeniable that the Redeemer's resurrection enters most intimately into every part of the system of salvation; and whether it be an unmeaning message which enjoins the remembrance that "Jesus Christ has risen from the dead according to my gospel?" Is it not, rather, a compendious memento of all that is contained in the gospel? And if a man, by remembering the resurrection, remembers that it is "according to the gospel"-that it, in fact, accords with the gospel-so that it unites itself, blends itself, compounds itself, with every iota of gos-ested in the declaration of the Apostle, pel truth, then the gospel will always bear to him the richest aspect of which it is capable; and he will look | forward to the resurrection as the full consummation of the saint's blessedness, and his thoughts will rest on the new heavens and the new earth spring-will ransom them from the power of ing, by a glorious resurrection, from the ruins of the old.

I leave to you to collect the several particulars of our discourse, and joining together our observations on these two clauses," of the seed of David," and "according to my gospel," decide whether they give not a beauty and emphasis to St. Paul's message to Timothy, which warrant their being called the very nerves and sinews of the passage. Oh! it is much to think of Jesus Christ as rising from the dead, and thereby vindicating to himself all that magnificent empire which scripture promises to the seed of David. And it is much, moreover, to consider ourselves inter

which proclaims the final overthrow of death, which so interweaves its every portion with the glowing prospects of a restored and renovated creation, that it may be said to utter constantly such language as this of the prophet-"I

the grave; I will redeem them from death; O, death, I will be thy plague; O grave, I will be thy destruction." Yea, truly, all this is much; and it is no idle thing that we be bidden to try to bear it in memory.

I trust not myself to speak on a topic which may almost be said to have split the Christian world into factions

If St. Paul was desirous of winning Christians from the earth, by what motive did he stimulate them? By the resurrection. "If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God." If this Apostle studied to animate himself by spread--I mean the doctrine of the first and ing before his view some sparkling object of pursuit, whither turns he for such object? To the resurrection. "If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead." If the Saviour exhibits the privileges of those who by faith are incorporated into his mystic body, whence does he derive his terms and expressions? From the

second resurrections-whether or no the buried saints of the Most High shall be personally and corporeally present, when the heir of David's line ascends that throne which we can now only know from the gorgeous spectacle of prophetic architecture; yet we nothing doubt that they shall be delightfully conscious of all that is passing